Tinkering and Tampering: Of the Wizarding Variety
by AelysAlthea
Summary: A collection of Harry Potter related drabbles, each less than 1000 words. From spellbinding magic to tales of woe, witchery and manifestations and all the slivers in between...
1. Chapter 1 - Could A Dog Smile

~Written for The 2017 House Competition~

 **Format** : Drabble

 **Prompt** : The Dog

 **Word Count** : 849

 **Summary** : Such a simple thing as a glimpsed quidditch match could mean so much to the right person.

* * *

 **~Could A Dog Smile~**

The raucous bellowing of students, of stomping feet and cackling laughter and boos as often as cheers, echoed throughout the stand above him. Strange, that less than three hundred of those very students could produce such a riot of noise.

But the dog wasn't thinking of that.

The toot of a whistle sounded, followed by the ripple of a groan. Accusations were flung, the words lost to the wind and the game and the excitement, cries of "Unfair!" and "What a call!" and "Come on, Hooch! What was that?"

But the dog didn't hear that either.

Slinking through the darkness of the stands, padding up the steps, he kept his ears pricked, nose to the ground, knees crouched. He was a shadow slipping between shadows, a wraith of only a whisper of sound. Not that anyone would have heard him should he utter any sound; Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had always been quidditch-centric. Always. Even back in the days when…

The dog paused as another whistle sounded, this time followed by such an outburst of excitement that he almost thought the game had been won. That it had finished, was over, was _missed_. But then another toot, another outburst of student jubilation, and the echoes of competition initiated anew. A goal, perhaps. Or a remarkable defence. That Gryffindor Keeper was something special; the dog considered that even were he an ordinary dog he would be capable of discerning that much.

Climbing the last few steps, he paused at the entrance to the grandstands. The doorway breathed grim light into the darkness within, the gloomy Scottish weather not quite bright but illuminating nonetheless. The sounds were louder, here – shouts, more tooting whistles, words and babble and chatter more discernible – and the smells of sweat and excitement wafted thickly into the dog's nostrils. But he couldn't see. Not over the protective barrier of wooden balustrade, not upon the pitch or the game battled before him. A player in red and gold zipped past, but disappeared in a moment. That was all the evidence of game he was afforded.

It frustrated the dog. He grumbled beneath his breath at the annoyance, but a wasted trip it was not. What kind of Dog would he be to turn tail and slink away at such a trivial barrier?

Dropping into a crouch once more, he instead crept – silently, always silently – towards the back of the stands. Around the stairwell and beyond. The shadows were darker there, the smell of encroaching winter deeper and tinged with the dampness of wood just slightly mouldy, but the dog didn't care. He'd smelt far worse in his time, and often upon himself.

And he climbed. Clambering up the ladder of stilts, of beams and through timber walls that were less walls and more of a patchwork of holes and wooden slats, he ascended the back of the stands. The passage would have been far easier had he hands rather than paws but…

The dog had never begrudged his canine status. Many times it had been a blessing.

The air was clearer, sweeter, crisper when he alighted upon the top of the stands. The very top, at that, upon the stretch of seating absented of students. The wind nipped at his ears like the fractious prancing of playful puppies, and just as he would those puppies he ignored them. He ignored the spread of warmly-wrapped Gryffindors below him, too, their waving, flailing hands and bellows of triumph for nothing in particular as far as the dog could discern. They were turned away from him, unaware, and so beneath his notice, too.

For he was discerning. From his perch, as much hidden by the shadows that surrounded him as the height of his placement, he watched the game. The dog watched as the ruddy quaffle soared between players, was scooped from the air, was battered from beneath an arm that held it too loosely. He watched as a bludger soared cringingly close to a Chaser's head, only to be redirected a moment later by a redheaded boy with a wicked swing. Brooms swooped, players dove, and goals were scored. Like a presiding vulture, the grey-clad referee drifted overhead, whistle tooting every other second in ear-splitting shrieks.

But the dog didn't watch the vulture. He saw but didn't watch the beaters and bludgers, the Chasers and Keepers and their quaffle. His gaze was affixed upon a single, small figure that swooped and dove like a darting hummingbird, weaving about the pitch as though it were his playground.

The boy was breathtaking to watch. A real natural on a broom. Images, memories, and feelings so strong that the dog could almost taste them welled within him, and he stared. He stared and didn't blink, didn't look away for even a second from the spectacle being performed with the fluidity of a dancer before him.

He was so like James. Harry, little Harry, with his hummingbird-dives and dexterity, that _naturalness_ , so like James. Different, and yet so, so similar.

Had he the lips to do so, Sirius Black would have smiled.


	2. Chapter 2 - Scars of War

~Written for The 2017 House Competition~

 **House** : Ravenclaw

 **Category** : Drabble

 **Prompt** : An injury

 **Word Count:** 900 _exactly_

WARNING: this is a bit of a grim one. A hint of darkness and morbidity and insinuated minor character death. Not quite M rating, I don't think, but this is just a precaution.

* * *

 **~Scars of War~**

He came out of nowhere. Teeth bared, claws extended, his eyes glowing in the darkness.

She didn't stand a chance. Like so many others, it was over the second he struck.

The Battle of Hogwarts was mayhem. It had started out as impossible and grew more impossible by the second. The Death Eaters battered at the castle's defences. Spells erupted along the stone walls, crumbling the brickwork like dust. The very ground seemed to shake beneath the assault.

And that was before their defences fell.

The night-darkened sky was alight with enchantments. Red, white, green, gold – a myriad of colours that crashed and burned and showered sparks onto the courtyard, the grounds, the fighters below. Spells illuminated dark-robed figures and scrambling students, fleeing Order members, professors and all those in between.

Suits of armour creaked to life.

The castle groaned in protestation, trembling upon its foundations.

Invisible shields from professors and foundations alike springing into existence, only to splinter and falter.

There were creatures, shadowy and twisted and indiscernible. There were ghostly conjugations – spells or ghosts or something in between – and it was terrifying. And the _noise_. Explosions were one horror, but the screams. The crying. The gurgles of pain that fizzled into nothingness or –

Or worse than that, the absence of sound entirely. A sharp blast, a flash of green, and nothing but the thump of a body hitting the ground.

The younger students had been evacuated. Through the Room of Requirement, through the Hog's Head, and _away._ She hadn't run. In the midst of utter terror, heart seizing in a tug-of-war between adrenaline and stark panic, she asked herself why. She'd asked herself time and time again.

Why hadn't she run when she still could?

 _Why hadn't she run?_

She fired with desperation at a Death Eater, robes billowing black and ominous. Her spell struck, and something like triumph, something also like fear, coursed through her. Then she was running, was fleeing, and turning and firing again. Anything to fight – to flee – to _win_ because that was what they had to do.

To fight.

To win.

That was all she knew anymore. Somewhere she'd been struck, she could feel it as a burn down the length of her arm, but she couldn't think that. She couldn't let herself. Once, such refusal of acknowledgement would have been impossible. A forgotten once, and at that time the greatest threat she'd ever faced had been a glaring Potions professor.

In the spread of the courtyard, amidst, fighting, firing, blasts, terror so tangible she could smell it, he came for her. Why her she would never know, but like a magnet drawn to a lodestone, his yellowed gaze fastened upon her. His yellow eyes glared, but he smiled. She caught a glimpse of him, and she was frozen, a feeble rabbit caught in the glaring hypnosis of a rattler.

Sounds collided around her, spells clapped and echoes rebounded. And she stared. The wand in her hand was useless; some innate part of her knew that much.

Then he charged. Like a beast, he leapt in strides as much as he bounded on all fours. He crashed through a staggering Death Eater. He soared over a body – a dead body, _dead_ – and skidded before leaping forth once more.

Half a step backwards was all she could manage. Half a step, and then he was upon her.

The ground was hard. Her head cracked. The weight that landed upon her chest forced her breath loose. The shrill scream that demanded to be liberated was silenced. She was crushed, beaten, slammed, and somewhere she noticed that her wand was flung from her grasp.

The werewolf slashed at her face with dark claws stained bloody black in the spell-illuminated light, splitting skin. Teeth gnashed, a sharp tear ripping at her chin, her throat. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear but for a discordant chorus of shouts and magical blasts and the _thump-thump-THUMP_ of her heartbeat all too loud in her ears. And then –

"NO!"

A voice screamed, a saviour, and in the blast of a colliding spell the weight was suddenly gone from atop her. The claws stopped clawing, the teeth stopped gnashing - her breath stuttered, but the heaviness, the _creature_ , was gone. She blinked, stared, couldn't see. Everything felt – _was_ – distant, her fingers a light-year away yet still closer than her toes, the sky a sheet of blackness. Or were her eyes closed? She didn't know. The battle still raged, she could hear, roaring through the ragged stutters of her heartbeat. Or was the roaring simply her ears?

Something… something hot stung her cheek. Hot and dripping and… and _torn_. A feeble voice whimpered in her head, a voice far quieter than the terror and the panic and the urge to fight or run or both. A voice that quavered, sobbing that her face, her _face_ , had been ripped to shreds, an injury the likes of which she'd seen all too much of since the battle had begun.

And that battle still raged. Distant now, but continuing. That feeble voice, through the thumping and the blasting and the heat that welled into something that was far worse than simply heat:

 _How… how ugly… such a scar to the face will be…_

Lavender Brown gasped. When her breath released, it was in an escaping exhalation, and none in the chaos heard its final warbling sigh.


End file.
